


oh lord i have been told/that i must take the unforsaken road

by mainland



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-07 14:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4266495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mainland/pseuds/mainland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unspecified wolf mecha AU: Chanyeol is a beast and Kyungsoo is his rider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh lord i have been told/that i must take the unforsaken road

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ. Inspired by the harnesses in the Growl MV and [Hyori 'driving' her back-up dancers](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrZia0QPu3A).

Chanyeol doesn't realize the liquid running down his face is rain and not blood until he wipes at his eyes and his hand comes away clean.  
  
He jerks his chin up, squints at the sky overhung with swelling storm clouds, black and billowing like the sails of a pirate ship. The winds rake through his hair like frigid bone fingers, but the rain turns warm when it hits him. His bare skin burns like a furnace. A sudden gust slaps the downpour across his face, familiar as a whiplash, rattling the gate of his stall, and Chanyeol bellows, stretching his jaw and baring his teeth as though trying to swallow the heavens into his red throat. He digs his nails in the top beam of his gate, splinters pricking and crushing against his palms, and shakes it til the bolts creak; he hunches his shoulders and braces his weight.  
  
Before Chanyeol can throw himself against the wood barricade, he's yanked back so hard his head cracks against the back post.  
  
"Shut up, mutt."  
  
The hand gripping the back of his harness twists until the leather straps cut into Chanyeol's belly. Chanyeol whines and scrabbles at the sides of his pen.  
  
"Baekhyun." A warning.  
  
Baekhyun releases Chanyeol, and cuffs him over the head.  
  
" _Baekhyun_."  
  
"You're too kind to him."  
  
Behind them, Kyungsoo taps one of his riding poles against his leg. "He's excited to ride," he says evenly. "Why don't you outfit your own wolf, now."  
  
Baekhyun turns on his heel, scoffing. "Zitao can dress himself."  
  
Chanyeol clambers back on his feet, chest heaving. His attention is still caught on the dogfight metres away, the roar of the crowd throbbing in time with his pulse, but he catches Kyungsoo's eye and lowers his head, low enough for Kyungsoo to pinch Chanyeol's chin between his leather-gloved fingers. The low, sickly light of the arena torches reflects in Kyungsoo's eyes, and Chanyeol slows his breathing, deepens it until it matches that steady flicker. He says, lips dry, "I can dress myself too."  
  
In the next stall, Zitao laughs out loud.  
  
Chanyeol slams the adjoining wall with his closed fist.  
  
Kyungsoo tightens his hold, pressing his thumb into the softness behind Chanyeol's jaw. "Save your strength. You can fuck him if you win him."  
  
A crack, then another whiplash gale splatters across Chanyeol's naked back, over his thick forearms and up Kyungsoo's face below his eye. This time it is blood. Thick and bright, Chanyeol follows the ooze of it down Kyungsoo's full white cheek. On his own skin, the blood moves faster, carving runs through the slick of rain and indistinguishable from the blood sprayed on him from the previous match, or the one before that. A single drop is caught on one of Kyungsoo's lower eyelashes, a tiny speared red pearl.  
  
Chanyeol catches the first drip that rolls off Kyungsoo's chin with his tongue.  
  
He licks Kyungsoo's face clean, his tongue pressed flat against the generous, smooth curve of his cheek. He tastes iron, and the sea. Sweat, rainwater, and blood. Chanyeol tries to breathe through his nose, knowing his breath smells like copper, but Kyungsoo doesn't flinch, only blinking when the tip of Chanyeol's tongue swipes the blood from his lashes and licks over the thin, soft skin below. The round firmness of Kyungsoo's eye underneath is an intimacy that thrills Chanyeol. Another inch, and he could sink his teeth in Kyungsoo's eye socket. Chanyeol touches his forehead to Kyungsoo's, daring to let their breaths mingle.  
  
"You should be watching," Kyungsoo reminds him.  
  
Chanyeol turns around, his body still leaned into Kyungsoo, just in time to see Kris split his opponent's spine lengthwise in two.  
  
There's no spray of blood this time, everything vaporized by the crackle of lightning in the wet air. Behind Kris's bloodied shoulders, Jongdae raises his fist, crackling with tendrils of blue bolts. Kris raises his arm too, still shackled to Jongdae by the length of steel between their wrists.  
  
Chanyeol rushes to the front of his stall with a shout, banging against the gate and joining the cacophony of howls. Kris is a hundred feet in the air and falling, broad enough to fill the sky, the rise and fall of his bleeding chest straining the leather straps of the harness that wraps over his shoulders and fastens to Jongdae's steel seat. Kris's stand is the lightest Chanyeol has ever seen, thirty-five pounds of steel, no platform, the bulk bound to his thighs and abdominal core with jointed supports that raise the seat above his shoulder blades. Just light enough to fly with, it's the closest thing to graceful any of them will ever get. Kris is the only wolf Chanyeol knows who carries his stand's weight and not the other way around.  
  
Ten metres from the earth, Jongdae wrenches Kris's arms back and their descent stabilizes, wind breaking in shrieks against the stand like on the hull of a crashing ship. Kris lands on one armoured knee, and Kyungsoo hooks his riding poles to the cuffs on Chanyeol's wrists.  
  
"Time to go," he says. On the field, Kris spits out a mouthful of blood.  
  
Chanyeol is steered from his stall, past the rows of other penned wolves. Zitao snarls at him as he goes, and Chanyeol kicks Zitao's door with his heel. He can only see glimpses of the other competitors through the slats in the tall back doors of the stalls, but he snaps at each one of them, upper lip peeled back to bare his filed canines. The ground underfoot is slippery with mud and filth. Chanyeol almost slips turning a corner but Kyungsoo tugs him upright with the ends of both poles held in one hand.  
  
His stand is under Joonmyun's watchful eye in the back lot of the arena, covered by a tarp. Unlike Jongdae's aerial contraption, Kyungsoo prefers to be as close to the ground as possible, so that if he reaches over the edge of his seat, he can touch the earth with the tips of his fingers, and rend it asunder.  
  
Chanyeol clambers onto his support, finding the pedals for his feet and crouching over the handlebars. His stand is fashioned like a vintage motorbike, painted with cartoonish flames and teeth, but constructed to slope into a low cockpit after the front seat. It allows for more autonomy than most; Chanyeol is not locked in place, nor is he is bound. If not for Kyungsoo in the cockpit and the poles directing his hands, Chanyeol could almost believe he were driving it himself.  
  
"Baekhyun's ready." Joonmyun tells them.  
  
"Zitao is still in his pen," replies Kyungsoo.  
  
Joonmyun quirks his mouth. "Zitao gets ready fast." It's an understatement that makes Chanyeol gnaw at his lip. Zitao who moves so quickly it's as though time slows down for him.  
  
Kyungsoo taps the left pole, sensing Chanyeol's agitation. "We've fought both Baekhyun and Zitao before."  
  
"We've never fought them  _together_  before," Chanyeol growls back, but he's more pissed than he is afraid. "We wouldn't be if Baekhyun knew how to keep his hands within his pack." They didn't fight their own, not outside of practice, but Zitao didn't belong with them and Baekhyun had taken him anyway, and that was an offense punishable by fatal combat. Chanyeol counts the number of stands in the fenced lot, the number of clean ones and the number already stained. The number of riders who would be returning home alone.  
  
He doesn't count Kai's stand. The black obelisk stands apart from the others, a circle cleared around it by riders who don't dare get too close. Chanyeol stood within a foot of it once. It's half again as tall as him, and twice as wide, and when he tried to catch his reflection in the glossy surface he saw only shadows, slipping away from the corners of his vision like eels in the deep sea. He asked what it was made of, but no one knew the answer. No one has ever seen the wolf inside, nor who holds the reins. There's no need to emerge and break a perfect defense, Chanyeol figures, when your stand can disappear and reappear at will, and invisible forces turn the hands of your enemies against themselves.  
  
A hand grabs the back of his hair and tips his head forward. Chanyeol growls on instinct, but fingers smooth over the back of his neck, stopping just shy of the entry socket at his nape. In his mind's eye, Chanyeol pictures Joonmyun uncoiling the plug at the back of his stand, a deadly snake-like extension as wide around as Chanyeol's calf and a hundred times as strong. Three two-inch prongs at the head like fangs that attach to his spine.  
  
Sparks snap to life with the hiss of pneumatic metal, and Chanyeol shakes his head, feeling the new weight at the base of his skull. His fingertips are on fire. Chanyeol sucks two of them into his mouth, swallowing the orange-red flames and letting the heat scorch his tongue and the insides of his cheeks. He groans and bucks his hips, rutting against the smooth metal of his seat. No matter how much he loves Kyungsoo, there is a part of him that hates the stand, the same desire to tear the machines to pieces that lurks in each wolf in the arena, to rip out the throats of their riders and slavers. Stronger than that is the desire to be whole. Chanyeol knows he has power. He can feel the fire simmering in his veins, his nerves, his muscles, from when he opens his eyes in the morning to when he goes to bed. Three nights a week he wakes up hard, sweating a fever, humping the mattress when Kyungsoo can't be obliged to help, and after he's come, lies awake still burning without a single spark in his palm. The entry of the plug into his body is like a torch to an oil well. It sets a match to the bonfire. It is the only thing that can.  
  
Kyungsoo's small hand slips around Chanyeol's bare hip to cup his cock. He leans over the front of his cockpit, cheek pressed to the small of Chanyeol's back. "I said: You can fuck Zitao if you win. Nothing sooner." The corner of Kyungsoo's lips are indescribably soft where they brush Chanyeol's skin. Chanyeol squirms, and Kyungsoo tightens his grip almost painfully. "Control yourself. Don't tell me Baekhyun was right when he said I'm too kind."  
  
"What if the bitch is dead when I win." Chanyeol pants, half-grinning.  
  
"Does that change something about my offer?"  
  
Chanyeol's laugh is breathless. "Baekhyun was right."  
  
Kyungsoo tugs the ring through Chanyeol's nipple hard in warning, then moves to undo the laces at the back of Chanyeol's pants. Chanyeol lifts his hips to ease the way, flinching at the patter of rain on the bare skin of his ass. Joonmyun attaches the second plug to his tailbone, the one that will sever his spine should Kyungsoo decide he deserves it.  
  
Fully plugged in, Chanyeol can only wait until he is told to fight or until they see fit to release him. The heat his body is running now could evaporate the rain a hair's breadth from his skin. Kyungsoo peels the tarp off his cockpit and climbs into the seat. Joonmyun holds an umbrella over him as Kyungsoo bares the back of his neck and allows Joonmyun to attach his plug. The moment the prongs slide in and Joonmyun locks the base, the ground of the entire arena trembles beneath them and a silent nova explodes in the corner of Chanyeol's mind, its light seeping through all corridors of thought.  
  
 _Unnecessary_ , Chanyeol thinks, for Kyungsoo to pretend neural activation can ruffle his control of his abilities.  
  
 _A warning_ , Kyungsoo thinks back,  _to our friend_.  
  
The fires jump from Chanyeol's fingers to his elbows, dance across his collar bones and behind his ears. Kyungsoo draws back his riding poles until Chanyeol sits like a sacrifice, arms splayed and chest bared, consumed in flame.


End file.
